What’s in a website? Would that with which an author advertises smell as sweet in any other format?

Yes, I’m updating my website. It’s not something I like to spend money on, and the promotional part of this writing business has never fit me well, but it’s time. If you visit Wayback Machine, you will discover that my first website (2006) looked like this:

No, that’s not Dorothy Hamill, and yes, I tried to make my website mirror Carl Hiaasen’s (he’s since updated his). I figured, at the time, that it was the “funny author” prototype website. Probably you’re thinking that’s odd because it has a leafy morgue feel, overall. A leafy morgue with Dorothy Hamill as the mortician. Don’t judge me.

Looking for something brighter, I updated to this website in 2007:

I take full credit (blame) for the above layout. I wanted a strong feminist feel (note the “woman” symbol as page divider), and I also wanted to convey that I intended to write across genres (the feminist stick lady wears a different hat on every page; I know--subtle like an axe). Seven mystery novels later, I chalk up my cross-genre dreams to the same delusional tendency that has me hang on to those size 5 Levis that will fit if I ever find a time machine or am lucky enough to lick a tapeworm.

Last year, in honor of my first three novels being reissued with new covers, I had my boyfriend, who is a wonderful graphic designer (but, it turns out, allergic to Dreamweaver), create this site, my third update:

I love his design. However, because the web software ended up handing him his own ass (let the records indicate that he fought the good fight), the site is really just a bunch of photos of pages rather than a true website. That means I can’t update ANYTHING, from my author info to my books to my events page. Bring on Beth Tindall, website designer extraordinaire, mystery fan, and Most Reasonable Woman I Know. She’s going to work with Steve to make me an uber-site, completely focused on the Murder-by-Month series, and dynamic. The new site’s go live date is March 1.

Which brings me to my question for you: what IS in a website? In other words, what do you like about the websites you like? What brings you back? What’s your favorite feature on your site (include a link so we can see what you mean) or what author site is your favorite (also include a link)? Join the conversation, and help me! Please. You see what I’m capable of when left to my own devices. Without your help, this could be my future:

Ethos, Logos, Pathos

Cricket McRae

A while back a young friend of mine told me about a persuasive essay she had to write as a school assignment. Waving her hand dismissively, she said, “You know, all that ethos, logos, pathos stuff.”

Well, yes. I did know about that “stuff,” though certainly not from high school English class. I’d come across it during my years as a geeky philosophy major in college. Ever since that conversation, the notion of how Aristotelian rhetorical technique applies to fiction writing has been floating around in the back of my mind.

Because apparently I’m still a geek.

Still, fiction writers do have to be persuasive. They have to convince readers the story they’re telling is not only possible and realistic, but important enough to care about. That’s at the very least. Sometimes a tale can go much further – to inspire, educate, or comment on social or political issues, for example.

Ethos appeals to the ethical character of the reader and/or relies on the character of the author. Especially in mysteries, the goal is to catch the bad guy and bring him to justice. An occasional variation on that is to allow the killer to escape because his actions were ethically, if not lawfully, sound. Protagonists must have a value system to which we relate, even if it doesn’t precisely echo our own. Heck, even antagonists have to have a value system that makes sense, though it’s often in moral opposition to ours. Ethics are always part of the drive behind a murder investigation.

Logos appeals to rationality. A logical argument uses reason, syllogisms, statistics and the like. But a piece of fiction has to make just as much sense as rhetorical argument in terms of logic. To be believable, characters have to act in a consistent manner. They must respond to situations as we expect them to based on their previous behavior. Or, if they don’t, the reason they don’t has to make logical sense. Works of fiction that involve world-building – fantasy, science fiction, paranormal, etc. – have to be logical down to the last invented detail in order to be believable. And too much coincidence is illogical, so realistic cause and effect should drive the plot.

Pathos appeals to the emotions. Writers have to be careful about overuse of pathos, not only because it’s considered cheap and underhanded (advertisers use A LOT of pathos to get you to buy stuff) but because it’s a delicate balance. It’s easy to be ham-fisted, especially if the author makes the mistake of telling the reader how they should feel. But in the hands of a skilled storyteller, pathos is probably the most important way to engage readers, keep them thinking about the book (or short story, or poem) long after they’ve finished it, and get them talking about it to others.

An author can’t make a reader feel, though. All we can do is create characters whom readers care about, put them in situations where the reader wants them to prevail, and then present realistic and relatable challenges and difficulties. People care most when they identify with someone. Sympathy is one kind of pathos. A deeper level of pathos involves engaging the reader’s imagination to the point where they are actually feeling what the characters feel. That’s what we want. Never mind that the characters are fictional.

It’s a glorious, circular, tricky business, indeed. As an author do you think about how you persuade readers via your writing, or does it just happen in the course of telling your tale? As a reader are you aware of being persuaded by a story? Do you seek out fiction that makes you feel a certain way?

Danger! Change Ahead

by Deborah Sharp

In Frisbee-flat Ft. Lauderdale, the 17th Street Causeway bridge to the ocean soars sixty-some feet above the Intracoastal Waterway. It's south Florida's version of a mountain.

On a recent bicycle trip home from the beach, I watched as my husband sped down the bridge. I brought up the rear, riding my brakes the whole way.

''Slow down,'' I yelled. ''Be careful!''

My voice was lost in the wind as he flew down the concrete span, jumped the curb, and pumped his fist in the air like a 15-year-old in a BMX race. It struck me as a pretty good metaphor for our marriage. A globe-trotting TV reporter, Kerry is the risk taker. A leap-before-looking type. I'm the worrier, cautious and careful. I'm always ready to apply the brakes and end the ride, should any risk appear suddenly in the road ahead.

When I turned 50 ... uhm, a few years ago ... I resolved to break out of my life-long habit of holding back. I decided to do one thing a month that terrified me. Not necessarily bungee-jumping or sky-diving, though I did climb into a small plane for a flying lesson. The challenges I set were more emotionally risky; more threatening to my shy, spotlight-shunning self. Singing karaoke. Performing on stage. Visiting a nude beach, my Lutheran conservatism be damned.

I met these self-imposed goals for six months, a period I dubbed The Half-Year of Living Dangerously. It was liberating to shake up my dull, middle-aged life, though I hated almost all of the challenges as I was doing them. It only felt good once they were done. Well, except for the nude beach. After that, I picked prickly grains of sand for days from crevices I didn't even realize I had.

Anyhow it's been ... uhm, a few years ... since I've done anything similarly risky. I'm back into a rut so deep I'm just barely peeking out over the edges. Meanwhile, a mystery writer friend in south Florida just announced she's chucking her college-teaching job, taking off alone on a small sailboat, and plans to write from the world's exotic ports-of-call. Risky. Scary, especially without the cushion of a spouse with health insurance and a good-paying job.

I look at some of my fellow authors at Midnight Ink and elsewhere, trying all sorts of new endeavors: writing second, even third series; doing stand-alone books in completely different genres; ending successful runs with well-loved characters to move on to new writing challenges. They're not riding their brakes. They're not coloring inside the lines. They're not afraid of getting too close to the edge and plummeting over.

So, enough. I'm not sure how I'm going to do it, but I'm going to shake things up. Maybe it'll be the writing. Maybe I'll try to do a comedy routine on stage. Maybe I'll travel someplace where I don't know the language or another soul and spend a week on my own.

How about you? Are you a leaper or a brake-rider? Any risks you'd like to take, but haven't?

Inundation!

Things are happening at about three thousand miles an hour these days.

Strange things, like the Snowstorm of the Century Across America, a crazy continuation of weather irregularities that have lambasted the US, and in fact much of the world, this past year. Snow where it doesn't snow, rain when it's supposed to snow, and building collapses from the weight of it all. Earthquakes, floods, extreme temperatures. Cholera, despondency, hunger.

Mubarak, riots, agents of change and agents of harm. Civil unrest, the cry for democracy, bloody participants and journalists alike. Joblessness, hopelessness, desperation leaking from the soul of a country. Full body scans, health care battles, shootings in the parking lot of a grocery store. At some point insanity has become the status quo. I feel like I'm living smack dab in the middle of Billy Joel's song We Didn't Start The Fire.

So I thought about that. There is just one word that encompasses all of this craziness: and that word is change. That trite old addage is still viable: nothing ever stays the same. Evolution, revolution, grow or stagnate, live or die. It happens in nature and it happens in humankind.

We as writers definitely have no lack of subject matter to cull stories from.

To write, is for me, a way to express my creativity and share some humor and make people smile in the face of the often harsh realities of life. But writing is also an escape, not only for the folks who pick our books up, but for me as well. I write to escape, to create an environment I can control, as much as I write to entertain. It goes beyond the "I write because that's what I do," or "I have to put words on the page because I'm strangely compelled to."

I think one reason I write is to try and slow the world down, the world that is whipping by me faster every day. It's my small attempt to make order out of chaos. And when I can make someone laugh, pull a person out of their troubles and make them forget for just a little while, it's all worth it. Worth the sometimes solitary torture of the blank page and characters who refuse to behave.

So. Why, really, do you write? Why do you spend hours, days, months at a time alone, pounding the keyboard? What truly, compels you to share your words, your worlds, your fictional friends? Is it about trying to control inevitable change or more about the freedom to allow change to happen as it needs to? What do you think?

Jessie

Hey! You in the back. SHUT UP!

Many (most?) writers I know have a little voice in the back of their heads, pestering them with questions, nagging them with doubts. Is the novel good enough? Will an editor like it? Will readers like it? Will your spouse like it? You call yourself a writer?

It’s not the muse talking; it’s the muse’s crazy uncle who got dropped on his head as a child.

Sometimes the questions seem valid, rational. Is the pacing good? Have you portrayed the protagonist as a sympathetic, multi-layered individual whom people would like to spend some time with? Are you sure you want the sidekick to say that?

Other times, the questions are of the extreme sort: What if you only sell eight copies? What if nobody shows up at your launch party except the old lady who shows up at every book event for the free refreshments? What if they arrest you for wanton and heinous destruction of trees?

Usually, I just tell the voice to shut the heck up. (Like my children, sometimes he listens, sometimes he doesn’t.)

Obviously, if I trusted my judgment more, the “voice” wouldn’t be raising so many questions in the first place. I might add that, at least for me, the uneasiness grows at certain points in the writing process. It’s definitely heightened when a manuscript has been submitted somewhere, or during the time right before a book’s release when the reviews start trickling in.

There’s one question I can’t seem to ignore, no matter how hard I try: Is the book any good?

As anybody who’s ever read a book or gone to a movie knows, “good” is subjective. One person’s good is another person’s “meh.” But it’s still a question that hangs around my neck like a turkey vulture.

Are my books any good?

My wife thinks so (usually). My mother thinks so (often). My critique partners offer their suggestions/ideas/criticisms (and excellent ones they are), but they don’t give an overall stamp of approval (too caught up in the nitty-gritty, I suppose. I mean, they’ve seen all the warts and blemishes along the way—and who could possibly put all that ugliness out of their mind?)

After a book’s acceptance, my editor thinks it’s good (I hope).

But still, I’m not swayed. All those people know me personally and/or have a horse in the race.

I don’t think I’m fully convinced (check that—I’m never fully convinced), something I’ve written is any good until a completely impartial person weighs in. Actually, I don’t think I feel at ease until a dozen impartial reviewers declare that my book doesn’t stink.

That’s why I was heartened by the first impartial review of KILLER ROUTINE, from Kirkus Reviews. The pullquote:

“Orloff generates considerable suspense en route to a conclusion most readers won’t see coming. Good-hearted characters…make this premiere of the Last Laff series a winner.”

So, that’s one down. Eleven more to go.

And you, in the back, SHUT UP!

*****

ALSO, I had the good fortune to be asked to participate in an awareness/advertising campaign for The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD. My picture is appearing on Metrobus ads, and I’m having a Where’s Alan? book giveaway contest involving DC mass transit, a camera, and my face. Check out my blog here for details and a peek at the ads.

 

Alan

THOSE DREADED “OUCH!” MOMENTS

ASSAULT WITH A DEADLY GLUE GUN has been on bookstore shelves for about a month now. I’m ecstatic over the reviews I’ve received so far and feel like I’m experiencing a never-ending Sally Field moment -- They like me! They really like me! However (hey, you knew there was going to be a “however,” didn’t you?), every once in awhile Google Alerts will send me to a link that makes me cry, “Ouch!”

These “Ouch!” moments are usually reviews from readers, not professional reviewers, and they make me wonder. Why would someone continue to read a book she obviously didn’t like from the outset? Why buy it in the first place? My book is a trade paperback. The retail price is $14.95. If I’m shelling out that kind of money for a book, I make sure it’s a book I want to read before I hand over my credit card. I not only read the back cover copy, I read at least the first few pages, if not the first chapter, before getting in the check-out line.

Even if readers are buying a book online, they have the ability to read a bit of the book before purchasing, if not from the online retailer, then from the author’s website. Most authors will post an excerpt of their books on their websites.

Maybe the reader received the book as a gift and didn’t have the ability to exchange it for something more her taste. Regift it, I say. I guess I just don’t understand why someone would take the time to read a book from cover-to-cover that she’s decided by the end of the first chapter she doesn’t like. The only logical explanation I can come up with is that the reader is suffering from OCD and is incapable of not finishing the book, no matter how much she’s disliking it. And I suppose the slam of a review is my punishment for her inability to stop reading something she doesn’t want to read.

Or maybe I’m the odd person here. What about the rest of you? Do you feel compelled to finish every book you start, or do you only continue reading a book if you’re enjoying it?

Another Attack of Anglophilia

Keith here.

It’s happened again. Like recurrent malaria, I’ve just suffered another attack of Anglophilia.

I’m not sure what brought it on, but it became particularly acute this week as I watched the six hour English-made miniseries Downton Abbey on PBS. There’s a beautiful estate, a righteous nobleman, a couple of headstrong daughters, a rich American wife, a downstairs filled with servants who have intrigues and loves of their own, and an acerbic harridan of a mother (played by the inimitable Dame Maggie Smith!).

I cannot pinpoint precisely when the mosquito-vector carrying Anglophilia bit me for the first time. I did love Sherlock Holmes as a boy. The first time I went to England I stayed a block from 221B Baker Street (or at least where it should be). After college, I studied English history over there along with cricket and lawn tennis and pubs and garden parties. What a life.

I remember Blackwell’s, my favorite bookstore in the world, located on Broad Street in Oxford. I know women who go shopping for shoes to cheer themselves up. Me? During my two years in England, when the least bit bored or out of sorts, I’d just drop by Blackwell’s and leave in the best of spirits. Back then, you didn’t even have to worry about paying for your books. On the way out of the store, I’d just wave a volume and call out my name. At the end of the quarter, a bill would show up. When it came time to move back to the States, I dropped off all my books at Blackwell's and they packed and shipped them to me. (My memory says there were four dozen cartons, but reason tells me there could not have been that many.)

In the last month or so I’ve read memoirs by Ivana Lowell about her privileged (and crazy) upbringing as granddaughter of a marquess and by Dame Antonia Fraser, historian, mystery novelist, daughter of an earl, and widow of Harold Pinter. I’ve also knocked off The Lessons by Naomi Alderman, which is set against a background in Oxford, and Howard Jacobson's The Finkler Question, the Man Booker Prize winner that explores being a Jew in England – which I was, at least for two years.

The United States has a population over 300 million compared to England’s 51 million, but do we write six times more novels worth reading? And why do the English do television so much better than we do? In addition to Downton Abbey, thanks to Netflix, I’ve recently watched the fabulous mini-series The Politician’s Wife and State of Play; the movie version of the latter with Russell Crowe couldn’t hold a candle to the original.

I wish I could say the books I write have been influenced by my Anglophilia. Nope, not that I can tell. My two published books are set right smack dab in Silicon Valley where I grew up and live now. The action in my latest manuscript is centered in Washington, D.C. I think I’d better start following the example of pal and fellow Inkster G.M. Malliett, who is setting another series in England. (Her Wicked Autumn featuring an MI5 agent who has retired as an English vicar will be out, when else, this autumn.) Ah, her research trips must be wonderful. Maybe I should take a chance and get myself over there and wait for inspiration to overtake me. But in the meantime, I’ll just keep reading those English novels and memoirs and watching those English TV programmes until this latest bout of Anglophilia subsides.

Cheers!